Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
What good are nukes for Ukraine? Surely their red lines would be no more credible than Russia's. It's not like they could use them without Russia using theirs, and they're not going to win a nuclear war against Russia.
The only use cases I can see are: to bluff, and to secure a conventional victory by dissuading Russia from nuclear escalation. But I don't think there's a strategy where they can actually use them, which as Russia is finding out kind of makes them less useful than one might hope.
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The military theory on nukes is mostly hypotheticals, but Ukraine has openly stated that in order to start peace talks, they want guarantees that Russia will not invade again later, and for Ukraine, nukes are a key part of that guarantee.
So basically, Ukraine openly wants nukes not so much for this war, but to prevent the next one.
Obviously, the threat of nukes could also be used to affect this war.
It could remove the incentive for Russia to attempt to fully conquer Ukraine ("we'll nuke Moscow and Leningrad if you try that"), but it can also be used to make more tactical threats, like "we'd rather nuke our own lands and your army than let you have our land", etc. No one knows at this point how Ukraine/Zelenskiy would use the threat of nukes, but in any case it would guve Ukraine a very significant new chip to play with.
(Also: nukes would give Putin something to be personally afraid of. He could die if Ukraine drops a nuke close enough.)